ABSTRACT
In 2009, the dying Labour government came up with one of the more amusing of its political gambits. As urban regeneration, and the new building programmes of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) were so prominent and so popular, how about a campaign focusing on them, presenting the buildings that resulted as proof positive that New Labour had not broken its promises, that it was the party of change, that it was rebuilding Britain and that social programmes were at its heart. The most impressive of neoliberal sleights of hand, and one pioneered in Britain before being eagerly picked up everywhere else, has been the creation of what Jonathan Meades neatly calls social hatcherism. The Urban Renaissance was key to all of this, and irrespective of its courting of suburbia, New Labour was very much an urban party. Its bases remained in ex-industrial cities, and its hierarchy was drawn from North London, Greater Manchester and Edinburgh.
